Tony HoffmanCanon Pixma MX420 Wireless Inkjet Office All-in-OneThe Canon Pixma MX420 Wireless Inkjet Office All-in-One provides a solid set of features that puts it in good stead for a dual role of home and home-office MFP.

The Canon Pixma MX420 Wireless Inkjet Office All-in-One provides a solid set of features that puts it in good stead for a dual role of home and home-office MFP.

The Canon Pixma MX420 Wireless Inkjet Office All-in-One ($149.99 direct) is the middle model of the three new Canon business multifunction printers (MFPs) I've recently tested. It lacks the speed and output quality, and some of the frills, of the Editors' Choice Canon Pixma MX882 Inkjet Office All-in-One ($199.99 direct, 4.5 stars), but packs in more features than the Canon Pixma MX360 Inkjet Office All-In-One ($79.99 direct, 3.5 stars). It offers a good range of features at a reasonable price for a home-business owner, and can pull double-duty as a household MFP as well.

Similar Products

The MX420 prints, copies, scans, and faxes. It can scan to e-mail (it'll open up your e-mail client and attach a scan to a new message), and fax either from your PC or your computer. A 30-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) lets you scan, copy, or fax multi-page documents.

At 7.8 by 18.1 by 16.4 inches (HWD) and 19.3 pounds, it's smaller than the MX882, yet is similarly styled, glossy black with rounded corners. Towards the top, the sides angle upward to meet the ADF and input tray. This gives the front panelwhich holds a 2.5-inch color LCD screen, alphanumeric fax keypad, and various function buttonsan upward tilt.

Below the panel and to the right of the output tray is a port for a USB key or PictBridge-enabled camera. Next to it is a door that protects three slots that fit a variety of memory-cards formats, including CompactFlash.

The MX420 has a 100-sheet top-loading paper feedera paper capacity that effectively limits it to home-office dutyand an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. It employs 2 ink tanks, black and multi-color, the same as the MX360.

The MX420 offers Ethernet, WiFi, and USB connectivity. We tested it over an Ethernet connection with a PC running Windows Vista.

Speed and Output Quality
We clocked the MX420 on the latest version of our business applications suite (as timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software), which combines graphics pages, text pages, and pages with mixed content, at 1.8 effective pages per minute (ppm). This matched the Pixma MX360's speed, and lagged the Canon Pixma MX882's 2.9 ppm. The Epson Stylus NX625 ($149 direct, 4 stars), also an Editors' Choice, zipped through the same tests at 4 ppm.

The MX420's text quality is typical of an inkjet MFP. The text is fine for general business use, though not good enough to use in documents like resumes with which you're trying to convey a professional appearance.

Photo quality was average for an inkjet, with the quality being about what you'd expect from drugstore prints.

Graphics quality was on par with vast majority of MFPs we test, good enough for general business use including PowerPoint handouts. By and large, colors were rich and well saturated. The MX420 had trouble printing out very thin white lines against a black background in one illustration. Other issues, all minor included banding (a regular pattern of lines of discoloration)dithering (traces of dot patterns in some solid areas), and slightly uneven distribution of ink.

The MX420 provides a solid set of featuresboth business-friendly ones like fax, ADF, and multiple connectivity options, and photo-centric items like its large variety of memory-card formatsfor a micro or home office, or for the dual role of home and home-office MFP. It offers more than the MX360adding a 2.5-inch color LCD plus Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, while the lower-priced model is limited to USB connectivity and a text-only display. Their speeds were identical, thoughboth on the low sideand the MX420's text quality wasn't quite up to the MX360's (which admittedly prints unusually good text for a sub-$100 printer).

For $50 more than you'd pay for the MX420, the MX882 gives you more speed, better print quality, and greater paper capacity, though it's bulky enough that you wouldn't want to share a desk with it.

The MX420 offers a good range of MFP functions for both work and home use. Its printing quality is adequate for most business needs, and its speed is on the slow side. For a home-business owner who needs an full-featured MFP, but who also wants a household printer for printing photos and the like, it's a good solution that doesn't break the bank.

Read More

About the Author

As Analyst for printers, scanners, and projectors, Tony Hoffman tests and reviews these products and provides news coverage for these categories. Tony has worked at PC Magazine since 2004, first as a Staff Editor, then as Reviews Editor, and more recently as Managing Editor for the printers, scanners, and projectors team.
In addition to editing, T... See Full Bio

Canon Pixma MX420 Wireless Inkj...

Canon Pixma MX420 Wireless Inkjet Office All-in-One...

Get Our Best Stories!

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.